Costs of Building a Garage

Garages are staples of everyday American life. You’ll want one to store your tools, your car, and your personal projects. If your house doesn’t have a garage, no problem! You can have one built. You definitely want to plan far ahead, though. Garages may seem like simple boxes for holding your stuff, but if you approach the project of building one with abandon you’ll run into difficulty.

Cost Considerations to Take into Account When Planning a Garage

Knowing your plan will help you build your garage as painlessly as possible. For this you need to know the various expenses associated.

Consider the square footage of space you’re going to need. Most garages are between 240 and 380 square feet depending on the number of cars they will hold. Hiring a contractor to take care of most of the execution of building the garage will run between 35 and 45 dollars per square foot. Of course, this will vary depending on where you live and the cost of materials. If you want to upgrade into higher-quality, expect to pay around 55 dollars per square foot.

Don’t forget about building permits for your area. Different towns will vary dramatically on the cost of getting a permit, and you’ll need an inspector to ensure that your build plan is sound and up to code.

You can expect to spend at least $10,000+ on your garage. This will be a relatively barebones, one-car type. Stepping up into higher quality materials and amenities like automatic doors will start to run the cost up. At the higher end garages tend to cost approximately 45,000 dollars. Obviously, there’s quite a bit of play in terms of price. To build the ultimate garage, like these, costs range upward of $50,000!

Consider alternatives

If you want to avoid many of the costs associated with hiring a contractor, you can also buy a prefabricated garage. They are manufactured with high-quality materials and can be significantly cheaper than building. You’ll still need the permits, and you’ll also need to lay down a foundation of concrete. This option can get you a large space for thousands less than building in the traditional way.

Overall, garages can be expensive and time-consuming to have installed, but you can minimize the pain with planning ahead.